Consumers expect relevant and personalized experiences. They want to feel understood by brands in every interaction across all touchpoints. In an increasingly competitive macroeconomic environment, they are simultaneously inundated with an abundance of options. The key to meeting these expectations is to provide a seamless, personalized experience that surprises, delights, and adds value to daily lives. To rise above the competition, brands require the appropriate tools to deliver timely, pertinent experiences that stand out and rise above the din.

With more resources allocated to marketing teams, it is possible to deliver these experiences. With this boost, teams are concentrating on customer retention, a task that is proving difficult due to the plethora of options available to customers and the increased competitive landscape.

Consumers are cautious with their spending, and when they do, they expect more from the brands they purchase. By maintaining the satisfaction of existing customers, marketers can better position themselves for both short-term success and long-term expansion. With acquisition costs at unsustainable highs and persistent economic instability, brands must consider retention and engagement strategies to keep customers for extended periods of time. 

Here are three methods to transform your data into insights that can be utilized:

Establish deeper ties with data teams

Investing in marketing teams capable of coordinating with data teams is the first step in transforming the amount of available data into enhanced customer engagement and retention. Enabling professional collaborations between these two groups will facilitate the development of customer engagement tools that strengthen customer loyalty and retention. Without congruence between marketing, product, and data teams, brands suffer from data silos that introduce error-prone opportunities, impede real-time communication, and produce disjointed workflows.

Make deliberate decisions regarding the data to collect

Together with their data teams, marketers must be more deliberate about the data they collect, mapping their collection strategy to specific use cases, metrics, and objectives. Given the enormous amount of data available today, it will be essential to be deliberate when transforming information into action.

Implement cross-channel strategies

As consumers today engage across multiple channels, a cross-channel approach can result in a tripling of the average number of purchases per user for each additional messaging channel used, thereby creating a customer base that is anxious to return. Cross-channel strategies also enable the ability to meet consumers wherever they are in their journey, thereby facilitating a more relevant and valued experience. 

Data scientists and marketing teams must collaborate internally to strategize and meet customers on the right channel at the right moment for cross-channel engagement to be effective. The 90-day retention rate of customers who receive cross-channel communications is 55% higher than that of users who receive messages in a single channel.

Ninety-nine percent of marketers claim they will alter their consumer engagement strategies within the next 12 months, prioritizing personalized, human-to-human communication in order to establish meaningful connections with customers. This can take many forms, such as providing helpful advice based on prior customer complaints or sending promotional commercial offers based on previous purchases. 

It is a marketing leader’s responsibility to ensure that customers receive a personalized and seamless experience when interacting with a brand. This is accomplished through effective data collection and management, a focused approach to interdisciplinary relationships, and the implementation of cross-channel marketing strategies.